


Sing Like The Wind

by Twitchiest



Series: Apocalypse Girl [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Post-Apocalypse, Present Tense, Trauma, a little bit of justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22121032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twitchiest/pseuds/Twitchiest
Summary: Is she supposed to regret any of this?
Series: Apocalypse Girl [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/307023
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Sing Like The Wind

_ **One** _

Siti is carried through the gates of Manor on the back of a cart, and it feels like coming home. Home, like a father's hug, and the book they shared. Home.

Home, where no one asks what happened, just categorises the enemy camp's goods and adds ponies to the herds.

_I killed people for you_, she thinks. Looks down and remembers smooth gloves and a father's hands on her shoulders, talking her quietly through a dangerous thing. Grey halls and metal doors. A group of nomads with dangerous smiles and sharp weapons.

Is she supposed to regret any of this?

_ **Two** _

Boss asks. Boss asks in the night. Late summer nights carry a chill, even in the Manor house, and Siti has a shawl over her shoulders. Boss demands an explanation, hands moving sharp and jagged, and Siti gives it.

There is no judgement. Siti does not doubt that Boss has killed more than she ever could. It's the look in her eyes when Siti tells her about the curses. The smile.

"Good," Boss says, finally, and lets her go. Then says, "Unless there's anything else?"

Siti doesn't freeze. She shrugs, spreads her hands wide, and closes the door behind her.

_ **Three** _

She slips away from breakfast to go back to the files, the maps, the little closed up space she's useful in. Finds it odd that the door next to it is missing, but her key to the map room works anyway. She goes looking for the lantern first. It's always a little dark in here.

Except... it isn't. It's brighter. Bigger.

The files are still all in the back, in boxes and on shelves, but the _back_ is further away. There's a new door near the back, new tables, and all the _maps_ are new. Big, beautiful and brand new.

_ **Four** _

One finds her running her hands over brand new maps with all the old pins, new settlements and old ruins, the road network Manor uses. He laughs, still familiar, still cracking. "You approve?"

She nods.

"I thought it was time to see the world as it really is." He pulls out a chair and settles in it. "We knocked through to next door to make an office. I think we need a couple extra people up here."

Siti nods again, moving across the wall. She needs some new thread - the trade routes are getting frayed...

"Think about who you want."

_ **Five** _

She freezes.

"I'm old," he says. "It's been a hard life. You've got the brains for this kind of work. Better than I ever was. In all my life, building this town, I haven't met a better candidate than you."

She doesn't move. Won't move.

"And you're sleeping with the future head of scouts, so your inter-personnel relationships are fine." Sharp, dry. Siti can't laugh any more, can't make the sounds, but she leans against the map and her shoulders shake, and it's the same thing, really.

When he smiles, you can feel it. "There," he said. "You'll do it."

** _Six_ **

It really is an office. There's a desk with drawers she can lock, a soft padded chair a little too large so she can wrap herself up in blankets in winter, a brazier tucked under the desk to produce a little heat. An entire wall of shelves, bookcases, sitting empty. A cupboard with paper and bottled ink and brand new Manor-made pins with bright glass knobs. A little table, with three chairs. Just enough chairs.

The space is too much, at least until she moves all the files in, but...

She breathes in the smell of fresh paint and relaxes.

_ **Seven** _

Summer turns, harvest time comes, and Siti organises her office. Old files in falling apart folders and new files in folded sheaves clipped together with metal, sorted by place and person. Everything set up, the way she likes it. She outright steals a couch from a disused room and accumulates shawls and blankets for the coming cold.

Siti did try help with the harvest. But then Ghost found a trade request that'd gotten lost in the refit, and Leander decided to check their stocks, and Mace needed help with some fiddly work and -

They're distracting her, of course. She knows.

_ **Eight** _

The question is, distracting her from what?

She pokes through the papers. But not all Manor business is on paper. The secrets here are held on the air, unseen and unheard, left to die with the people who know them. Like a conversation at night, her Ghost in a forest she shouldn't be, like clouds sweeping across the land.

So she asks, one idle night, when Mace is busy hunched over wires, swearing soft and sweet. Asks, and watches Ghost's face change from contentment to guilt, from looking at her to away.

_I can't tell you,_ Ghost says. _Not yet._

_ **Nine** _

So.

Siti pushes at the edges. She lurks in the kitchen, nibbling stolen sweet pastries and listening to the cooks complain about cracked pots, the berry pickers eating fruit as they pick it, and _that man_ sweet-talking one of the young girls in the breakfast crew.

She doesn't so much as twitch, and the person next to the loud woman hushes her in an instant, but.

But.

Then someone hands her a package and asks her to run it to Leander, so she leaves.

She makes a note to get more pots made for kitchen, too. She likes happy cooks.

_ **Ten** _

It doesn't matter how much she pushes, how subtle. Someone slips, everyone else catches them. Or she's moved quickly from a place before someone else gets there. It's a secret all of Manor gets to know, except for her.

Sometimes people mention a man.

Not often. Three, four times. It's a laugh that he can't seem to pick up the hand-language, or a comment on his ability at some unexplained task. Never a compliment. Always followed by a glance in her direction.

He.

Him.

A person she hasn't met yet, eating at Manor's table, working with Manor's people, a secret...

_ **Eleven** _

The sun is setting. Mace is changing shirt, Ghost is watching him, and Siti is leaning out the window watching people bringing their tools in. There's only a couple days to the festival, and one or two fields left. Still, there's food to preserve, stores to stack away.

There's a child with skin as dark as hers running between adults. That's odd. There's a lot of people here, but she didn't think -

_There's a boy with skin as dark as hers._

She pushes away from the window so hard she stumbles, hits carpet and stays there. She can't breathe, she -

_ **Twelve** _

Ghost is saying something low and soft.

How long has it been, since - since? How long was she in her town? He'd been a year old in her arms. Then - then seven freezing winters, and last year, and this year coming, but he'd been - he'd been born in spring, he had to be nine -

"- Siti, look at me. Look at me. Please."

He looked happy. There'd been other children. He'd been running, they were probably playing a game, going down to dinner.

She can't go down to dinner.

Breathe. She has to breathe. If _he's_ here, he's here. Just breathe.

_ **Thirteen** _

Her hands move.

_What's his name?_

She can feel Ghost hesitation in the way her fingers shift on Siti's legs. "Vartan," she says. "But... he answers mostly to Vard."

It's a good name. Her father would have liked that name. It's not what she called him.

Breathing.

"I'm sorry," Ghost whispers. "I didn't want him anywhere near you, but we had to... it's a trap. If he trusts us, he stays where we can find him. We're gathering evidence." She swallows. "We can't just ask everyone where he is then make him vanish, Siti. We have to do this right."

_ **Fourteen** _

She doesn't go down to dinner. She doesn't go down to breakfast. She huddles upstairs during the solstice feast, listening to music, lying between Ghost and Mace in warmth and safety. She stays there for another two days before she dares to leave their room, goes from it to the sanctuary of her private office and her brazier and her blankets.

Everyone is so _sorry._

Her son is here. His father is here. Manor isn't safe, can't be safe, he's here he's here he's here -

Every time the panic rises, she curls up in her chair and breathes it away.

_ **Fifteen** _

Evidence. History. Accounts.

They turn up on her desk. She doesn't ask why, or how. She just reads them, from her account at the start to quiet interviews in little settlements all the way across Manor's land. He liked it here. The wealth of it all, she thinks. Food, water, and... company.

Missing people. Not all female. Not all people he'd been... expressing attraction towards.

It doesn't help. She's still eating away from the main halls, and she doesn't know how Manor kept him from seeing her, how she can be in the same place as he is without screaming -

_ **Sixteen** _

A week into the documents turning up on her desk, Siti's thoughts finally settle.

Manor can't simply imprison anyone they want. They rely on their good reputation. His appearances in farmsteads and little settlements is erratic, as if he avoided places on the way. Holding him as a worker is the only way to hold him at all.

They weren't keeping her away from him. They kept _him_ from _her._ Not even a glance across the eating hall, or the fields.

Everyone in Manor is _keeping him away from her_.

The warmth of it is so strong her fingers tingle.

_ **Seventeen** _

Just living normally is terrifying. What if the shield breaks? If he turns a corner and sees her?

She lets Ghost lead her down for breakfast, chattering about some new vines the scouts found in one of the outer fields that had tiny, super-sweet berries, and she eats, and she only feels a little sick. She goes out, trotting across to the library or carrying requests from One to the radio people, and she fights not to look around for him, to be way of him, to be sure -

People smile and wave and talk to her, and nothing happens.

_ **Eighteen** _

A body left out in the open cannot be identified as anyone's, if it's been out there a few months. A year. Years. There are a lot of old skeletons in the world. Hard to tell old from new.

Hard. Not impossible.

Bay has the scouts on little strings, tugging them this way and that. They've gone just about anywhere for her. Found the strangest things. He didn't take trophies, didn't steal away trinkets.

That wasn't the point. Siti knows very well.

But the trinkets, they're identifiers. Identifiers mean burials. Mean people who know, who are angry, who are talking -

_ **Nineteen** _

Boss stalks into her office and flops down in a chair. Siti winces for her.

"Serial killers," Boss mutters. "You'd think they'd learn."

Leander, following, closes the door with a gentle click. "You can't go around putting heads on spikes," he says, and then, "Please don't put heads on spikes."

The way Boss stares at him would have anyone else flinching. He bears it.

Without warning, she turns to Siti. "He's got wind of the investigation," she says.

"Not of you," Leander says, soft.

"First chance he gets, he's going to run." Boss leans forward. "Make your damned move already."

_ **Twenty** _

There are nights when she can feel the cool, clammy feeling of the gloves on her skin, hear her father's calm voice as he explains what to do. She thought about it, a lot. He didn't hesitate, not once.

Siti hadn't hesitated. Not in choosing to run. Not in the clearing, with strangers who would have destroyed Manor for existing.

Sometimes she wonders what happened to her people. What happened to her mother.

She stares into the place just before the wall ahead of her, breathes in and out steadily. No panic, right now. No shaking. Just this.

She nods.

_**Twenty** **One**_

It's a simple plan.

When she stops to think, it becomes terrifying.

Siti's sat in the kitchen, flipping through a couple of last year's reports from one of the Dedham trade caravans, when a group of children are herded in to help. "To keep you out of trouble," the head cook says, surveying them

She wants to look up. She wants to see him. The neat itineries blur in her eyes. The page trembles.

It's not long before she's interrupted by an unfamiliar, "Who are you?"

She raises her head-

In dizzying moment that lasts heartbeats, forever, she can't breathe.

_ **Twenty Two** _

"You can hear me?" the boy presses. "Right?"

He has her father's eyes.

She lets go of paper to form a wordless, Yes.

He blinks back. "I don't understand all of that yet," he complains.

"She doesn't have a choice," says one of the cooks. Alice. Siti will remember that name forever, now, thank it forever, because Alice comes over and says, "Siti can't talk."

"Oh." He wrinkles his nose at her, then holds out his hand. "I'm Vard. You're... Siti?"

She takes it, for an instant. Musters a smile. _Pleased to meet you._

He glances at Alice. "Do you...?"

_ **Twenty Three** _

It's a small conversation. Simple. What is she doing? How did she get here? Had she been of the tribes? His dad said they were, but he'd never met any. What were the tribes like? Did she have any family?

Curious. Her son is curious, bright, wanted to know. It feels like a knife in her gut, twisting. Still. She smiles, and she listens, and she answers what she can. The answers are careful. Enough to give it away, if he tells his father about her.

His mother is dead, Vard says. A long time back.

_Not yet,_ she thinks.

_ **Twenty Four** _

If he happens to leave the kitchen when she does, she's not saying a word. Hands her work over to One, upstairs, then makes her way through her own routine with a quiet little shadow. He's intelligent. He might not have all of Manor's signing down, but if she simplifies her answers, he works it out.

And he likes the radio. She drops in for a moment, for any messages for the big house, and the staff there greet him like old friends.

Around, to the library, to return a book. They greet him here, too, with a wary edge.

_ **Twenty Five** _

"Can I talk to you tomorrow?" he asks, in the twilight hush next to the big house. She nods. This is the point, after all. To attract his attention, hope he talks about her to his father. Hope his father is the same person he used to be. He was impulsive enough to follow her north. Maybe...

_There should be traders in tomorrow,_ she tells him. _I'll be near the courtyard._

His face lights up. "I'll be there," he says. Squints up at her. "You're weird. But I like you."

And then he's gone, a darting figure in the dark.

_ **Twenty Six** _

The traders turn up mid-afternoon. Bay sits with Siti on a wall, crossbow on her back, dressed like she's about to go out on a run. They watch Leander talk with the traders, and check over the carts. No one pays notice to them. No one asks why Bay has Siti's crossbow.

Her son doesn't show. Not for a long time. Siti doesn't know when she catches the flicker of movement in the corner of her vision, but she turns her head and he's...

There.

Staring. The same face, but wary, cold. Hard.

Then Bay moves, and everything gets confusing.

_ **Twenty Seven** _

Siti is still sitting down when Bay stands and moves, and then there's shouting. Then he's got a knife out and is dragging someone, but she can't see properly, and then she's at the front of a crowd, pushing through next to her Ghost, and there's a small girl, a young girl, and her son shouting at his father and then him turning to her, to Bay, running, something like _stop it!_

Or there is this moment, still, where she tilts her head and meets the angry and frightened gaze of a stranger she used to know.

She's not afraid.

_ **Twenty Eight** _

It's a simple choice. Such an easy, simple choice. He has a knife to a woman's throat, and he's threatening her. He's doing it in front of traders, backing towards their carts, their animals.

Manor will come out clean in this.

Siti reaches out to Bay, and she lifts the crossbow from her hands gently. Bay says, "Siti," and her name rings out clear in near-silence.

He turns back towards her. She raises the crossbow, aims, breathes slow even as he shouts something- she's not listening- and fires.

Every time a bolt flies, Siti fancies it's singing as it goes.

_ **Twenty Nine** _

He crumples slowly. Her son is shouting. Siti lowers her crossbow, even as he beats at her side, and looks at him. She doesn't know what she looks like, but her son goes very still.

"Come on," Bay says, tugging at his shoulder. "Vard? Let me get you out of here."

"He's my dad," her son says, sounding hurt, confused, broken.

"I know," Bay says, so gentle. "Come on."

The man she could have loved forever is lying on Manor's cobblestones. Siti stays where she is, staring, breathing, until Mace takes her by her free hand and leads her away.

_ **Thirty** _

"A part of him knows what his father did was wrong," Bay tells her. "He's still young. I... know a little of what he's feeling." Quiet, in Siti's office, where Bay is sitting and pointedly not looking at the woman sat next to her. "Give me time."

She thought her son lost to her years ago. She doesn't care if he hates her, as long as he's safe.

"When he turns out like his father?" Boss says casually. Her hand is tight on the arm of her chair.

"He won't." Sharper. "I didn't."

"You think you can raise two children?"

_ **Thirty One** _

Siti freezes.

Bay turns to look at Boss. "What?"

Boss smiles back. She flickers her other hand at Siti. 

Bay turns to look at Siti. "What?" she repeats.

_It's not certain,_ Siti tries. _It isn't right to tell anyone unless you're sure. Not until at least three months._

"What?" Bay says.

"Oh," Boss says, rolling her eyes. "She broke." She stands up. "Train him well, pup," she says, and saunters away. Doesn't quite slam the door behind her. 

Bay is still sat there, staring at Siti, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. "You're," she says, and stops. "But how, I -"

_ **Thirty Two** _

Siti blinks back, and makes a hand gesture that isn't a sign.

"Well, yes," Bay says. "I know that. But you were drinking the tea."

_No._ Siti shrugs.

"So, what, you were trying to...?"

Siti hesitates, curls her fingers together. _Hoping,_ she decides on. _Wanted._ Wanted the hope in Bay's eyes. _Our child._

"Ours," Bay breathes. "All of ours." She swallows. "A baby. Siti, what if I -"

Siti tilts her head. _You are Ghost,_ she says. _You are brave, and kind, and capable of anything._ She bites her lip. _So you can tell Mace._

"You didn't tell him?" Bay yelps.


End file.
